White Collar: Wish I Was ThereHappy to Be Here
by Ruahnna
Summary: Sometimes adventure finds us where we are.


**Title:** Wish I Was There/Happy to Be Here

**Rating**: Gen

**Genre/Relationship: **Peter and Neal (friendship)

**Spoilers:** None

**Word Count:** 1701

**Summary:** Sometimes adventure finds us where we are.

**A/N:** For Caffrey-Burke Day

**Wish I Was There/Happy to Be Here**

It had been a busy day, but a boring one. Neal sought solace in his tie drawer, hoping for something to alleviate the boredom or at least assuage the monotony of his case load. The gods of paperwork had evidently been angry, for there was much to read and little to glean. Everyone was cranky, and Neal felt a sort of claustrophobic fatalism that came with a desk job. He was not cut out for _this_. In the field, in the hunt—hell, even in the _van_, he was okay, but hours and hours of this—a nightmare of 9-to-5s like this—and he felt the old urge to flee, to live wild and unencumbered, one step ahead of disaster and loving it. Well, _mostly_ loving it. He sorted through the postcards he kept tucked away in his desk. He had no one he wanted to write, but the idea of write _from someplace_ was hard to ignore. His eye caught the blue of the sky in one—an almost unearthly expanse of blue sky in the corner and he fished it out of the stack and smiled at it. It showed a pastoral scene in an Italian town, the terracotta roofs tiles picturesque and gleaming in the sun. Ah—_that_ was a memory….

_Okay_. Neal took a deep breath and looked out the window. _Going to prison wasn't that bad. Going to prison mangled __**might**__ be. _He looked out the window again, trying to gauge the distance, looking for handholds. He turned and looked around the hotel room, willing his mind to piece together something brilliant and unexpected and…non-lethal. The window looked like the only option—that is, except getting caught. Well, _technically_, _letting_ himself get caught. As long as there was an option—the window—that he could choose, he could still choose to be caught, couldn't he? That wasn't cheating, was it? He'd not been caught before, but this agent was closing in, closer and closer with each miss.  
Besides, it was Peter. After all this time, there wasn't any shame, was there, in being caught by Burke the Jerk? Even in his current state, half-frantic and annoyed, the moniker didn't really fit. Burke _hadn't_ been a jerk—_wasn't_ a jerk. If he _had_ to surrender, then he thought he could take it on the chin from Burke, and let the chips fall where they would. Peter would be fair—harsh, maybe, but fair—if it came down to it….  
Still, the window…he was young. He could heal. He swung one leg over the edge, put one expensive shoe on the almost non-existent ledge. His heart began to beat even faster (thank you adrenaline), and he felt a cold sweat break across his back. They had to be practically at the door—_had_ to be, and he could almost feel Peter breathing down his neck. The cold sweat was cooling on his skin and he gripped the window with both hands, trying to ready body and soul for this leap of faith or folly or—  
"Neal! For god's sake, get your head out of the clouds! Grab on!"  
Neal's head snapped up and he whacked it loudly on the window, but while the pain made his eyes water, his face was already breaking into a huge grin. _Mozzie! And a grappling hook! _The roof was a beautiful sight, the sun glinting off Mozzie's shining pate.  
Neal grinned and waved, motioning for Mozzie to throw again. Mozzie swung the hook in a careful arc—Neal could almost _see_ him doing the physics calculations in his head—and he grasped the cool metal as it came near. The edge was pointed—not too bad, but not healthy to grab onto anything fleshy. Neal looked at it and immediately rejected the idea of holding on with his hands. _Nobody hires a thief with one good arm_. Finally, Neal hooked it into a loop and tightened it around one of his shoes. He pulled until his foot felt pinched, but the tightness made him feel secure.  
"Come _on_," Mozzie cried.  
"Make sure it's fastened tight," Neal called. Mozzie nodded. They exchanged looks. If this didn't work, well…. All the king's men were already running up the hotel stairs, so it would be up to the horses…. Best not to think about it too much. Someone was pounding on the door—  
Neal stepped out the window. The rope gave, held, slipped a little and—finally—began to move up. Luckily, it wasn't far, or it would have been Mozzie's heart that gave out and not Neal's nerves. In a relatively short time—which seemed like an agonizingly _long_ time, Neal was on the roof, grinning at Mozzie.  
"Yeah, yeah, the cavalry's here," groused Mozzie. "Can we get the lead out?"  
"Let's get the lead _and_ the gold out," Neal said. He shouldered one of the packs lying in a pile on the roof, then another. He picked up a third and Mozzie helped secure everything so it wasn't flopping around. Mozzie picked up his own two packs and Neal helped him in turn, making sure the weight was as evenly distributed as it could be.  
They grinned at each other, as much from nervousness as triumph, and ran to the edge of the ornate rooftop. Neal looked relieved, but Mozzie gulped a little.  
"C'mon, Moz," said Neal, a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Piece of cake. Count of three, okay?"  
"Never say—"  
"One!"  
"Piece of cake—"  
"Two!"  
"In the labyrinth!"  
"Three!"  
"AhhhhH!"  
They launched themselves, legs pumping and landed with only minor trauma to their joints, but they were young, and laughing and the next jump was even easier. They ran clattering across the rooftops, the air cool on their faces, and by the time the Carabinieri burst through the doors with Agent Burke of the FBI, they were shimmying down a drainpipe and running for Mozzie's car. Mozzie still mourned that car.  
They didn't look back, but if they had, they would have seen Agent Burke of the FBI hanging out the hotel window and staring up at the blue, blue sky.

"Whatcha thinking about?" said Peter. Neal startled from his reverie, his feet sliding off the edge of his desk.  
"Oh! Um, nothing much," he lied. He tried to put the postcard away on the papers on his desk, but Peter caught it and held it up. Neal squirmed while Peter looked at the picture for a long moment, squinting in consternation at the picture, trying to place the—  
"Oh! I remember _this_ one," Peter said. He looked at Neal, his expression dark. "Did you take this out of my box?"  
Neal looked confused by the question. "Your box? What…?"  
But Peter had flipped the card over and saw nothing—no smartass note, no XOXOXO, no artfully smudged stamp. "You bought more than one?" he demanded. "How many other agents were you taunting?"  
Neal, trying desperately to recover his composure, shook his head and looked injured. "I wasn't—none. Just you. And, for the record, I wasn't _taunting_ you—I was….." He trailed off, mesmerized by the look in Peter's eyes. It was the same look cobras give before they strike, and Neal stopped, not sure what—if anything—was safe to say at this point.  
"I finished the bank fraud case," Neal said meekly. Sometimes, if you drop your eyes in front of the alpha dog, he doesn't grab you by the throat. Without warning, Peter's large, warm hand settled on the back of Neal's neck (how the heck were Peter's hands _always_ warm?) and gave him a half-squeeze, half-shake.  
"Oh, you _need_ something _new_ to do?"  
This was always a trick question. If you said "no," then you weren't pulling your weight. If you said "yes," then you might find yourself smushed into the van or going undercover with way too many blinders one. Still, if the choices were rusting out or burning out—he'd go out in a blaze of glory any time.  
"Maybe. What do you have?"  
He heard Peter smile and dared a look up. Peter was looking at him, his face half-stern, half-amused.  
"I'm going under as a real estate appraiser," Peter began.  
"Great," Neal murmured. "Real estate fraud." Peter squelched it with a look.  
"I might need a hand in there, and you can go in as my junior appraiser whose work I'm supervising in the field."  
"Gosh, Peter," Neal said, wide-eyed and innocent. "I don't know if I could manage that—pretending to be under your supervision and all, since I'm—"  
"Can it, won't you?" Peter said irritably. "You in or out? I can always take—"  
"Oh, I'm in," Neal said. He stood up and stretched, glad to be out from behind the desk. "_Anything_ to avoid another stack of files."  
"Good. C'mon and get briefed," Peter managed.

They walked up the steps, up to the glass-walled office, and Neal's spirit rose with each step. Here was another adventure in the field! Mozzie had said once—in Peter's hearing—that it wasn't about the money. Well, _some_ of it was about the money, but the money was just a means to an end, a means to purchase adventure and life in the danger of the moment. Neal thought about the last few weeks—hell, months. Adventure had not been lacking. He felt Peter's eyes on him and turned and smiled his best Errol-Flynn smile.  
Peter frowned, not sure what to think. "What's that smile about?" he asked. You never knew with Caffrey—there was always an ace tucked away somewhere.  
"Nothing," said Caffrey. "I'm just happy to be here."  
"I guess this _is_ better than prison."  
"Not what I meant," muttered Caffrey, refusing to try to describe his unexpectedly ebullient mood. They were at Peter's door, and Peter got the handle first. He held it, and Neal turned and looked at him for a moment before walking in.  
"I get it," said Peter. "You're just happy to be here."  
Neal thought about it—thought more about it than it showed—but at last he smiled. "Yeah," he said. "I guess I am."


End file.
